Zbigniew Libera

Interdisciplinary and critical artist who creates objects, installations, videos, video installations, photographs and multimedia projects that tend to be controversial, referring to a particular political or social problem. Born in 1959 in Pabianice. He lives and works in Warsaw.

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Zbigniew Libera

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small (760 px)

Podpis obrazka

Zbigniew Libera, at his own exibition in Zachęta National Gallery of Art, 15th of January 2010, photo: Włodzimierz Wasyluk

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Zbigniew Libera began his artistic career in the early 1980s. In December 1981, reacting to the introduction of martial law, he printed leaflets and posters protesting against the bloody suppression of the protests in the Wujek coal mine. He also printed leaflets for the Solidarity movement. In spring 1982 he had his first solo exhibition at the Strych in Łódź, but in the autumn he was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison for printing and distributing anti-state publications. This period is seen as formative for his artistic identity. As he told Artur Żmijewski and Łukasz Gorczyca in an interview:

I’m a well-known destroyer. I’ve destroyed most things, although I didn’t do it for others but rather for my own experience.

Embarrassing art

Zbigniew Libera, "Obrzędy intymne", 1984, fot. dzięki uprzejmości Galerii Raster — Zbigniew Libera, Intimate Rites, 1984, photo: courtesy of Raster Gallery

Between 1983 and 1986, after he was released from prison, he was active in the Łódź-based Kultura Zrzuty (Chip-In Culture) movement. At the same time, he made his first two videos working from home. As Łukasz Ronduda wrote:

The change in Libera’s environment from a very hostile place (prison) to a very friendly one (the family home) would cause him to try to re-familiarise himself with the world and to rebuild his dysfunctional relationship with it; it served as a pretext to talk about the specifics of the self’s subjective-objective battle with the ‘reality of influence’, and also about the ‘relationship of mutuality’ between the individual and the world.

Libera’s videos from the time deal with precisely this ‘relationship of mutuality’. For two years during that period, Libera was caring for his grandmother, Regina G; she was over 90 years old and she was seriously ill, bed-ridden and not communicating with the outside world.

In the Intimate Rites (1984) he immortalized intimate treatments performed on his grandmother – washing, feeding, changing diapers. In Mystical Perseverance (1984) he shows her repeatedly rotating a chamber pot around its own axis. In her hands, the potty becomes a sort of a substitute of a rosary. Libera noticed:

The work describes an activity of a mystical-magical nature, independent of any known form of religion, magic or art. It neither creates nor challenges any system. It is performed daily, irrespective of the current state of political, social, cultural, artistic, financial, official or unofficial circumstances. (...) The work is intimately connected with Regina G.‘s existence. Aside from her mental functions, it is the only activity she performs on her own. It is her only form of contact with the outside world.

In the video Jak Tresuje sSę Dziewczynki (How to Train Little Girls, 1987), Libera tackled another aspect of the ‘relationship of mutuality’ mentioned by Ronduda: the adaptation, communication and absorption of role models and sexual roles – social ‘training’. In the slow-motion video (shot during a family meeting), a young girl is taught how to mould herself into the image of a woman. Adult hands pass her a lipstick, a nail file and pieces of jewellery, and apply makeup to her face. An initiation ritual is being performed, but above all, a certain basic knowledge is being passed down about how to create a feminine image, about the paradigms of attractiveness and control over one’s body. Izabela Kowalczyk remarks:

The type of behaviour specific to males and females, when performed by adults, seems to us to be ‘natural’. (...) But the artist challenges this ‘naturalness’ by showing that these behaviours are acquired, and that we are often completely unaware of their artificiality.

However, as Łukasz Ronduda points out:

The artist intended the video to speak about the general condition of our survival, about the fact that we are sentenced to an aesthetisation of our personality, to a self-creation in which outside influences are transformed into the qualities that will become the foundation of our identity.

Libera himself said in an interview:

For me it was a phenomenal example of the processes that we know are obvious, but which we usually don’t notice and whose presence in our lives we don’t acknowledge.

In the first half of the 1980s, Libera was active in the Kultura Zrzuty movement, and he was involved with the Strych gallery almost from the time it was founded. Those ties weakened around 1985, when Libera, along with Jerzy Truszkowski, Barbara Konopka and Jacek Rydecki, formed a kind of artistic commune as an alternative to Strych. They painted together, played in the punk-rock band Sternehoch and conducted artistic activities with the patients of a mental institution where Libera was employed as a nurse. As Łukasz Ronduda wrote:

They created a provocative, iconoclastic power that embarrassed not only society, but also their fellow artists. Their main goal was to live a creative, intense, ‘colourful’ life.

Critical art

Zbigniew Libera, "Body master", 1995, fot. dzięki uprzejmości Galerii Raster — Zbigniew Libera, Body master, 1995, photo: courtesy of Raster Gallery

In the late 1980s, Libera moved in with Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek, modelling for Kulik’s photographs and living with them for two years. In 1989 he took a trip to Africa and spent several months there. In the 1990s his earlier work was recognised as anticipating the phenomenon of critical art, and he himself was proclaimed to be the ‘father of critical art’. During that time he started showing his work in galleries, evoking a strong response from the public. He also started creating sculptures and objects, one of which was an inscription, Christus Ist Mein Leben (1990), in the style of the sign over the entry gate at Auschwitz. The collection at Warsaw’s CCA includes Libera’s 1991 video installation Kąpielowicz (The Bather), funeral-parlour slang for a dead body since corpses are washed before a funeral. In the installation, a transparent spiral resembling a pipe emerges from a screen showing the image of water flowing down the drain – an allegory of departure, transience and death.

In the 1990s Libera returned to one of the themes of How to Train Little Girls, creating a series of fictional children’s toys – ‘prostheses of adulthood in the child’s world’ – which serve in reality to ‘train’ children, to teach them certain forms of behaviour and ascribed sexual roles; the toys are instruments of socialisation. But first and foremost, the toys here are reflections of society’s notions about the body and how it should be disciplined, and Libera assumes a contrary and ironic attitude toward the ideals they promote. Ciotka Kena (Ken’s Aunt, 1994) adds a dose of reality to the unnaturally slim standard of beauty projected by Barbie dolls. The piece was meant to be an older, fatter version of Barbie dressed in a somewhat old-fashioned outfit like a blemish slapped on the canon of beauty. Możesz Ogolić Dzidziusia (You Can Shave The Baby), another series of dolls from 1996, were baby dolls with hair under their armpits, around their genitals and on their legs. As Izabela Kowalczyk wrote:

(This piece) refers to the cultural complex surrounding body hair, which is inconsistent with the desired feminine appearance. Hair on a woman’s body is treated as something wild and untamed, something that should not be there because the female body should be perfectly smooth.

The title – which is also the inscription on the doll’s packaging – indicates the way in which we should treat the doll, which is as a plaything.

Libera also dealt with the issue of the socialisation of boys and what society teaches them should be their attitude towards women. Eroica (1997) is a set of small figurines similar to the toy soldiers or Indians that boys collect, except that this is a collection of naked women in poses suggesting dancing (under a spotlight), submission, flight, surrender or oppression. The packaging urges you to ‘collect them all’, which implies possession while simultaneously suggesting that the objects are meant for children ten years old or older. Kowalczyk notes:

The female body represented here becomes an object of possession, [adding that] the artist points (...) to the issue of male identity, which is reduced to machismo and the use of violence.

In his 1996 exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Libera presented the Urządzenia Korekcyjne (Corrective Devices), a series of instruments for boys to discipline the immature male body and help it attain an imaginary ‘ideal’. One of those was Body Master Dla Dzieci Do Lat Dziewięciu (Body Master for Children Up to the Age of 9, 1995), a resized multi-gym with an accompanying chart illustrating the ideal that the user was supposed to be striving toward: a muscular body-builder caricature of a small boy. As Libera said:

The perversity of the ‘Body Master’ is that, being a toy copy of genuine body-building equipment (the weights are very light), the only thing it can train is the child’s psyche. As a result, it produces a sense of the effect willpower can have on the body.

The artist also exhibited a penis-expanding device (‘for babies, boys and grown-up men’), called the Universal Penis Expander (1995). The device is supposed to help ‘expand the penis to up to 100 cm in length’, preventing its user from ‘conducting normal sexual activity, but instead reaching a permanent state ‘on the verge of orgasm’.’ The toy therefore helps its user to attain an ‘altered state of consciousness’. The work addresses popular notions about the male sex organ, but in interviews, the artist denied any intention to criticise phallocentric cultural patterns. Libera stresses that the male body, like the female one, is treated by contemporary culture as something that can be transformed at will and made to fit the current paradigms of appearance. The male body is also disciplined in the process of striving toward the culturally-promoted ideal of a physically strong and sexually effective man, capable (by implication) of violence. As a girls’ equivalent of the Body Master and the Universal Penis Expander, the artist created Łóżeczko Porodowe (Birth Bed, 1996), which resembled a doll’s stroller.

Lego. Concentration Camp

bigniew Libera, "Lego. Obóz Koncentracyjny", 1996, fot. dzięki uprzejmości Galerii Raster — Zbigniew Libera, Lego. Concentration Camp, 1996, photo: courtesy of Raster Gallery

Libera’s toys confront the codes of mass culture, analysing them critically and even ridiculing them. But he stresses at the same time that his objects are meant to ‘educate’. The most famous of Libera’s ‘toys’ is Lego: Obóz Koncentracyjny (Concentration Camp, 1994), a series of photographs and packages that the artist suggests contain Lego sets for building a mock concentration camp. The work stirred up a major media controversy (caused by critics’ too-liberal interpretation of the artist’s intentions). Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski, the curator of the Polish pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennial, refused to show the piece, prompting Libera to cancel his participation altogether. Moreover, Lego, the Denmark-based company that had sponsored the work, threatened to sue the artist (but eventually decided against it). According to Kazimierz Piotrowski:

Libera’s case will certainly go down in the annals of global sponsorship as one of the few instances in which an artist managed to incorporate a corporation, rather than the other way round.

Embedded Work

Lego Concentration Camp - Zbigniew Libera

Lego: Concentration Camp can be interpreted on a number of levels. Jacek Zydorowicz lists the issues the piece addresses, including distancing oneself from marketing manipulation, the potential for violence in children’s toys, the role of memory in culture and meta-artistic questions. As Libera himself said:

The thought that originally led me to create this piece concerned the very rationale that forms the basis of the Lego building-block system, which struck me as something horrible: you cannot use these blocks to build anything that a precise, rational system doesn’t allow.

The work can be found today in the collection of the Jewish Museum in New York.

Photography

In recent years Libera has devoted himself chiefly to analyzing the media and the significance of the image in mass culture. In the series Pozytywy (Positives, 2002-2003), he used famous photographs of war and destruction as ‘negatives’ for the ‘positives’ that he then staged: soldiers lighting a cigar for a semi-recumbent man instead of Che Guevara, men on bicycles lifting a road barrier instead of German soldiers breaking through a border crossing Cykliści (Cyclists), smiling figures in striped costumes instead of concentration camp prisoners behind a barbed-wire fence Mieszkańcy (Residents) and tired racers instead of dead bodies Porażka W Przełaju (Failure in a Cross-Country Race).

According to Łukasz Ronduda:

In the ‘Positives’ and their ‘logic of repetition’, what we have is a detailed analysis of the relationship between trauma and its representation. The artist seems to be saying that the effects of a trauma cannot be fully presented (represented), but can only appear in our imagination as ghost images as the viewers’ recall the original versions of the staged photos.

These Positives were continued in the series Ostateczne Wyzwolenie (Final Liberation, first published in the weekly Przekrój in 2003. The cover shot was Sen Busha (Bush’s Dream) showing an Iraqi woman enthusiastically embracing a US soldier. The misleading photographs of smiling soldiers and Iraqis were travesties of war images.

The Mistrzowie (Masters) series (2004) is considered to be the artist’s reaction to his work being censored at the Venice biennale. Libera created fictional pages of high-circulation newspapers and magazines – such as Gazeta Wyborcza, Magazyn Gazety Wyborczej and Polityka – featuring fake interviews with his masters, neo-avant-garde artists from the 1970s: Zofia Kulik, Jan Świdziński, Anastazy Wiśniewski and Andrzej Partum. This work was a tribute to them, but it was also a reflection on art history, the process of exclusion and the context of artistic activity, as well as its entanglement in the contemporary processes of marketing and promotion. As Libera said:

The press has become the sole gauge of what is good or bad in art; it catapults you to fame or destroys you. Yet the press is not really prepared for the task. I too, not having anyone else to turn to, had to resort to the press, which has assumed the role of mediator between art and the public.

In 2005, in collaboration with poet and prose writer Dariusz Foks, Libera published the book Co Robi Łączniczka (What Does a Liaison Officer Do?) inspired by the history of the Warsaw Uprising. Folks wrote 63 chapters, which were arranged into a sort of mirror narrative and were accompanied by Libera’s photomontages featuring Western movie stars (Gina Lollobrigida, Anita Ekberg and Sophia Loren) against the background of Warsaw in ruins. As Katarzyna Bojarska wrote:

Foks and Libera are not interested in the actual facts of the Warsaw Uprising; rather, they are interested in the representation of these facts, particularly in the presence or absence of certain elements. What they propose is a very unorthodox vision, in opposition to the official patriotic version of the uprising promoted by the Warsaw Uprising Museum.

Libera also analysed the media and the place of images in the contemporary world in Albumy Fotograficzne (Photo Albums, 2005), which contains re-photographed pictures from the daily press with each album devoted to a different media publication. Glossy magazines became a starting point for the La Vue series (2004-2006). The photographs resembled abstractionist landscapes and were created by photographing spaces between the pages of the magazines with an analogue camera.

Libera’s next project, The Gay, Innocent and Heartless, is comprised of a series of photographs and a book — a fabricated journal of a partisan, and magazine pages. The whole tells a fictitious story whose main theme is the mythicised masculinity patterns juxtaposed with the unrealness of Neverland, to which contemporary incarnations of Peter Pan flee. This project marked Libera’s return to the critique of media and contemporary visual culture, as a result of which the viewer is encouraged to perceive them more cautiously.

In his subsequent project, the artist continued experiencing photography as an object of manipulation, both semantic (like in the series Pozytywy / Positives) and visual (like La Vue). The experiences of Poztywy was then continued by the realization Wyjście Ludzi Z Miast (The Exodus of the People from the Cities), which was presented for the first time in 2010 during the exhibition Early Years, prepared at Kunstwerke in Berlin by the team of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. It is a panoramic photograph showing the world after a catastrophe as a result of which people are forced to leave cities. The session was made on an unused fragment of the highway near the city of Płock. It seems like a futuristic vision or a still from a disaster film, but in the Polish context, it may also be seen as a distant echo of the exodus of people after the fall of Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

Rzeczywistość Jest Płaska (Reality is Flat) continues the artist’s exploration of the relationship between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality. Libera started working on it in 2010, and its initial phase was shown on an exhibition in Profile Foundation. The project assumes the construction of a car prototype, which would reflect foreshortening and other image distortions characteristic of a photo or video-camera. It is by no accident that the object of this ‘demystification’ is a car, a commodity that for many is an indicator of social and financial status.

Teaching

Didactics is a new thread in Libera’s work. At the end of 2008, Libera stayed in Prague at the invitation of the local Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), where he agreed to run an open studio (which, by the way, would seem impossible in the case of Polish art schools). Libera imposed several conditions: he did not want to be incorporated into the university rigour and hierarchy — he lived in the studio, the students visited him at his house, and the studio itself was located far from the academy’s headquarters.

Libera based his method on Oskar Hansen’s Open Form theory. He is its ‘second generation’ inheritor — thanks to his friendship with Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiecik, and research in their archive. He decided to call the project Open Form Studio. Other than professor Grzegorz Kowalski from Warsaw, who also develops the ideas of Hansen in didactics, Libera focused on the formal model of exercises introduced by Hansen in Solids and Planes Studio at Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. As Łukasz Ronduda wrote:

Paradoxically, Libera’s engagement in didactics was motivated by a desire to return to the pre-education phase, to the level of the easiest gestures, creating a situation of fun, cheerful and spontaneous creativity.

Later on, Ronduda adds:

A crucial method of Libera was to permanently saturate the exercises from the past with a media element, working with the camera. The artist introduced the so-called active documentation, as part of which the student learns to take action and document this actions at the same time. The student also learned the seemingly simple fact, that no documentation is objective.

Retrospectives

In 2009, the first Libera’s retrospective, comprising the three decades of his work, took place in Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. The exhibition Libera: Prace 1981-2009 (Libera: Works 1981-2009) showed, except for the well-known works, previously unpublicized photographs and videos from the 80s, alongside with some corrective devices from the 90s, which previously were not exhibited in Poland.

In 2011 and 2012 Libera was working on the cycle Nowe Historie (New histories), which was presented by Raster Gallery in an exhibition under the same title. As the gallery’s website says:

Libera’s latest photographs compose an independent, all the while intellectually consistent, whole. With Positives, we grappled with the traumas of the past, here we measure up to the nightmarish visions of the future. Libera illustrates the presentiments and fears that arise in our considerations of what the future has to hold. The scenes that seem impossible, or conversely – the scenes that we are certain will come to life sooner or later. In various ways Libera illuminates the most obvious of futurist frames – the apocalyptic notion. He takes on the role once again of an insightful critic of the cultural stereotypes of today, as opposed to that of an engaged prophet.

The photographs from this series bring back the old stories anew: the figure of the Other, relations of power, exclusion, colonization and liberation. They’re also, to a higher degree than before, anarchist fantasizes; dreams about Sensitive Police Officer (Wrażliwy Policjant, 2012) and the First Day of Freedom (Pierwszy Dzień Wolności, 2012). They’re created by the artist with the consciousness that he is in the social position of creating tempting images and disturbing discussions. The people portrayed by Libera — a representative of the ancient Achaean tribe, Rastafarians, orthodox Jews, policemen, wealthy white Europeans — abandon their culturally and historically constructed roles and go back to the primaeval relations characteristic of tribal communities. Behind them smoulder forlorn abandoned cities and fossilized soil.

The photo-book Fotografie (Photographs, 2012) is the first retrospective of Libera’s photography. It contains works made in the years 1982-2012. Several photographs appeared in the book for the first time: male nude Dürer, a portrait of a child soldier Capa Boy, the cycle Lekkoatleci (Athletes) and new fragments of the series Młoda Polska (Young Poland), Domowy Performance (Domestic performance) and Ktoś Inny (Someone else).

Łukasz Gorczyca, the editor and publisher of the album, said in an interview for Culture.pl:

The arrangement of the book, which is subtly divided into four chapters, emphasizes not only the specificity of each period in the artist’s work, but, most importantly, draws attention to various strategies connected with using photography; various philosophical premises related to working with a photograph: starting with the initiatory, self-referential function of photography, through using this medium as a means of confrontation between the individual and history, to end up with creating one’s own social utopia, own territory.

In this book, the viewer can see Libera’s absolute immersion in photography. We find out about his journey, always accompanied by a photo camera — in all moments of life, economical circumstances, various epochs and sociopolitical realities. The artist tells both personal and common stories — the trauma of World War II, family experiences, imprisonment, the martial law in Poland, political transformation and catastrophic future.

Fiction film

In 2011 Zbigniew Libera became the laureate of the first edition of the Film Award established by Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Polish Film Institute and Wajda School. It is a sort of a scholarship/grant for visual artists. The means are to be allotted to creating a fiction film. Walser, Libera’s full-length debut, was created thanks to the award. It tells a story of the life of a lost tribe of forest people which is disrupted by civilization embodied by a railway clerk, Walser.

Libera spoke of the film the following way:

The adventure of a lifetime of the railway clerk, Andrzej Walser, which is the plot of our film, is an attempt to talk about a lost chance. The chance to alter our current, posthuman, as Michel Foucault called it, way of existence, that we assumed by choosing the path of civilization. Although this story is fictitious, it could have potentially happen in the future and it does not blight its inner truth.

The tribe is called Conteheli. Their members are people with eyes blue like flax, fair dreadlocks and young bodies. They look like an embodiment of hippie fantasizes about coming back to nature, or like a Slavic version of Na’vi from Avatar. Their life resembles paradise, up until the moment when a representative of the outside world appears. He wants to enter their pastoral realm and learn the incomprehensible language at all costs, but all his presence brings is chaos and destruction.

The press materials read:

The stylized world of ‘Walser ‘flirts with the tradition of genre cinema: post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, western, or films about cavemen, where primitives and ‘glamour’ were not mutually exclusive. The clichés known from this sort of films serve as blocks from which Libera builds a multilayered jigsaw: from the literary figure of paradise lost, philosophical and countercultural concepts of a utopian community, or fantasizes about the end of civilization.

At the invitation of BWA Gallery in Wrocław, Libera became the curator of Studio Mistrzów (Masters Atelier), a project which was to allow young artists to be challenged by the vision of an artist-curator, interpreting their works from the perspective of a different generation. The participants of the casting announced by BWA Gallery were over seventy young creators from all over the country. Libera chose six of them, with whom he later prepared an exhibition in BWA Awangarda Gallery: Honorata Martin, Tom Swoboda, Michał Łagowski, Piotr Blajerski, Maryna Tomaszewska and Franciszek Orłowski. What he said about them was:

These artists are not trying to solve problems they see with their art, but they’re authentically, emotionally and personally engaged in them. It is a sort of spirituality; a spiritual disposition, perhaps. This is something that was and still is absent at the contemporary artistic scene. I was stricken by, for instance, the fascination with poverty and homelessness.

The exhibition Artysta W Czasach Beznadziei: Najnowsza Sztuka Polska (editor’s translation: The Artist In Times of Hopelessness: New Polish Art) did not present all the works but at the top of things the documentation of the creative process as such. The artists chosen by Libera were faced with what cannot be shown and will remain a secret. They were trying to define contemporaneity, which Libera himself called ‘the epoch of hopelessness’.

Towards the end of 2015, the Xawery Dwurnikowski Museum of Sculpture Królikarnia invited Zbigniew Libera to choose the most interesting pieces from the museum's collection and present them in an exhibition organised for the 50th anniversary of its establishment. Libera not only constructed an interesting selection of sculptures and installations, but also provided commentary for each of them in the form of drawings and photos made especially for the event. Large-format photographs and sketches in A1 format drawn with pencil and crayons were presented along with the selected sculptures and objects to create a visually attractive display. The exhibition received the title Zbigniew Libera: To Nie Moja Wina, Że Otarła Się O Mnie Ta Rzeźba (Zbigniew Libera: It's Not My Fault That This Sculpture Rubbed Against Me) because, as the artist claims, ‘objects try to catch our eye, and the rays of their flashes are hooks that trap us’.

In 2016, Zbigniew Libera was invited to participate in a collective exhibition entitled Rysa Na Powiece (Scuff Mark On An Eyelid) organised by the Municipal Gallery BWA in Katowice. The project was designed to demonstrate all the changes that occurred in Europe throughout several decades of modernisation – including the failures. The terrorist attack in Paris on 13 November 2015 was a direct inspiration for the exhibition, as well as the social response and the wave of aggression that flooded immigrant communities as part of the aftermath.

The exhibition was a visual tale about the rapidly changing reality around us. The title is a metaphor that alludes to the danger of gouging out an eye. In the Western European tradition, eyes and vision are a symbol of rationalism, consciousness and culture; the lack thereof was identified with entering the sphere of darkness, chaos and barbarism. The title emphasised that brief moment, which separates us from falling into a collective panic that would entail an immediate intensification of social tensions, fears and hostility towards strangers.

Zbigniew Libera's diptych Śmierć Patrioty (Death of a Patriot), which appeared in the Scuff Mark On An Eyelid exhibition, displays a group of naked and barely naked women undressing a man by force. The photographs have an ambivalent character since we're not quite certain whether the entire scene is part of a mysterious ritual or maybe a mere act of violence. In the bottom corner of the photo we see Libera himself – a voyeur invisible to others–taking pictures with his phone. The composition of the photo alludes to many iconographic presentations of sacred art, such as descent from the cross or the entombment of Christ. The naked women might be seen as the contemporary embodiment of the ancient Furies, who take revenge on the eponymous patriot overthrowing an existing order of power or lost to pleasure Bacchantes, taking pleasure in humiliation. Their sexuality is also ambiguous – it might be seen as alluring and liberating; however, there is a sense of madness and danger to it.

The exhibition – organised as part of the 25th Ars Cameralis Festival –touched upon topics of inequality, marginalisation and economic differences, in which unassimilated immigrants become victims of symbolic violence.

Zbigniew Libera was invited as one of the guests at the 7th edition of the Wszyscy Jesteśmy Fotografami (We Are All Photographers) series, which took place in the spring of 2017 in Warsaw. He led a panel entitled Sztuka Ze Sobą, Czyli Artysta W Centrum Uwagi (Art With Oneself, The Artist In The Spotlight).

As part of the Bienniale Arte In Memoria 2019, Zbigniew Libera constructed a monumental, moving installation in the ruins of Ostia Antica in Rome, where the festival has been taking place for several years. Libera's installation, entitled Where Do They Go?was a several-dozen-meter fragment of railway tracks located on an embankment near the remains of the oldest synagogue in Europe.

Libera's latest booklaunch – Artof Liberation –was held at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle at the beginning of October 2019. This three-volume publication consists of article excerpts concerning Libera, both from Poland and abroad, but also topics of discussion present in the world of art over decades. The ‘press study’ covers 30 years of the artist's work (1988–2018) and it also indirectly shows the state of Polish art criticism and the institutional infrastructure of art in Poland. Dorota Monkiewicz wrote the introduction to said book.

Selected solo exhibitions:

2014 – Noc sądu / The judgement night, Galeria Labirynt in Lublin (with Roee Rosen)
2013 – Płaska rzeczywistość / The Flat Reality, Atlas Sztuki in Łódź; Positives, Kraszewski Museum in Dresden
2012 – Nowe historie / New histories, Raster gallery in Warsaw
2011 – Kokatao, Piktogram Gallery in Warsaw; Pozytywy / Positives, The Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz; Positives, Kabinet T Gallery in Zlin; Zbigniew Libera, Open form studio 2008/2009, Tranzitdisplay in Prague
2010 – Libera. Prace 1981-2009 / Libera. Works 1981-2009, BWA Awangarda, in Wrocław; Rzeczywistość jest płaska / Reality is Flat, Profile Foundation in Warsaw, Wyjście ludzi z miast / The Exodus of the People from the Cities, Kronika gallery in Bytom; The Gay, Innocent and Heartless / Szczęśliwi, niewinni i bezduszni, National Museum in Kraków; Obrzędy intymne / Intimate Rites, haloGaleria MOK in Olsztyn
2009 – Libera. Prace 1981-2009 / Libera. Works 1981-2009, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Libera. Prace 1981-2009 / Libera. Works 1981-2009 — BWA Awangarda Gallery in Wrocław
2008 – The Gay, Innocent and Heartless – Profile Foundation, Warsaw; Mistrzowie i Pozytywy / Masters and Positives, BWA Gallery in Zielona Góra, Le Vue – Fotograficka Galerie Fiducia, Ostrava
2007 – Photographs, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Pozitivy, European House of Photography, Bratislava
2006 – Works from 1984-2004 – University of Michigan School of Art&Design, Ann Arbor, USA; Co robi łączniczka – Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biała (with Darek Foks); Fotografie – Galeria Raster, Warsaw
2005 – Atlasy fotograficzne i inne wydawnictwa – Centrum for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Co robi łączniczka – Galeria Kronika, Bytom (with Darek Foks); Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris (with Martha Rosler)
2004 – Mistrzowie i pozytywy – Atlas Sztuki, Łódź; Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot; galeria a.r.t., Płock; Positives – Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2000 – The Other Type of Prison – American-European Art Associates, New York, USA
1998 – Correct Me if I’m Wrong – Guy McIntyre Gallery, New York, USA
1997 – Zbigniew Libera – Gallerie Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark; Zbigniew Libera – Gallerie Wang, Oslo, Norway
1996 – Urządzenia korekcyjne – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
1993 – Prace z powietrza i elektryczności – Galeria na Mazowieckiej, Warsaw
1992 – Zbigniew Libera – Galeria Laboratorium, Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw

Selected group exhibitions:

2017 – L’artedifferente: MOCAK al MAXXI. Exhibition of Works From The MOCAK Collection in Rome, MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome; Od SztucznejRzeczywistości Do Selfie:AutoportretW PolskiejSztuceWspółczesnej / From Artificial Reality To A Selfie:Self-Portrait In The Art Of Contemporary Polish Artists, BWA Gallery Awangarda, Wrocław; Art Fair COSMOSCOW 2017, GostinyDvor, Moscow; The Finger,exhibition organised by Raster and Raw Art gallery for the Fresh Paint Art Fair, Tel Aviv
2016 – Działania Z Rodziną/Activities With Family, Raster Gallery, Warsaw, Z Głębi:ArtyściMuzeumŚląskiemu/ From the Inside: Artists for the Silesian Museum, Silesian Museum, Katowice; WobecAwangardy XX Wieku (In Light of the 20th Century Avant-garde), Atlas Sztuki, Łódź; Medycyna w Sztuce / Medicine in Art, MOCAK, Kraków; Rysa NaPowiece/ Scuff Mark On An Eyelid, BWA Katowice
2014 – Noc sądu / The judgement night, Galeria Labirynt in Lublin (with Roee Rosen)
2013 – Płaska rzeczywistość / The Flat Reality, Atlas Sztuki in Łódź; Positives, Kraszewski Museum in Dresden
2012 – Nowe historie / New histories, Raster gallery in Warsaw
2011 – Kokatao, Piktogram Gallery in Warsaw; Pozytywy / Positives, The Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz; Positives, Kabinet T Gallery in Zlin; Zbigniew Libera, Open form studio 2008/2009, Tranzitdisplay in Prague
2010 – Libera. Prace 1981-2009 / Libera. Works 1981-2009, BWA Awangarda, in Wrocław; Rzeczywistość jest płaska / Reality is Flat, Profile Foundation in Warsaw, Wyjście ludzi z miast / The Exodus of the People from the Cities, Kronika gallery in Bytom; The Gay, Innocent and Heartless / Szczęśliwi, niewinni i bezduszni, National Museum in Kraków; Obrzędy intymne / Intimate Rites, haloGaleria MOK in Olsztyn
2009 – Libera. Prace 1981-2009 / Libera. Works 1981-2009, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Libera. Prace 1981-2009 / Libera. Works 1981-2009 — BWA Awangarda Gallery in Wrocław
2008 – The Gay, Innocent and Heartless – Profile Foundation, Warsaw; Mistrzowie i Pozytywy / Masters and Positives, BWA Gallery in Zielona Góra, Le Vue – Fotograficka Galerie Fiducia, Ostrava
2007 – Photographs, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Pozitivy, European House of Photography, Bratislava
2006 – Works from 1984-2004 – University of Michigan School of Art&Design, Ann Arbor, USA; Co robi łączniczka – Galeria Bielska BWA, Bielsko-Biała (with Darek Foks); Fotografie – Galeria Raster, Warsaw
2005 – Atlasy fotograficzne i inne wydawnictwa – Centrum for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Co robi łączniczka – Galeria Kronika, Bytom (with Darek Foks); Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris (with Martha Rosler)
2004 – Mistrzowie i pozytywy – Atlas Sztuki, Łódź; Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot; galeria a.r.t., Płock; Positives – Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2000 – The Other Type of Prison – American-European Art Associates, New York, USA
1998 – Correct Me if I’m Wrong – Guy McIntyre Gallery, New York, USA
1997 – Zbigniew Libera – Gallerie Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark; Zbigniew Libera – Gallerie Wang, Oslo, Norway
1996 – Urządzenia korekcyjne – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
1993 – Prace z powietrza i elektryczności – Galeria na Mazowieckiej, Warsaw
1992 – Zbigniew Libera – Galeria Laboratorium, Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
2015 – Wyspa 3.0. Mapa i terytorium / Island 3.0. The map and the territory, Instytut Sztuki Wyspa, Gdańsk; Stance or Distance?, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto; Dzikie pola. Historia awangardowego Wrocławia / The Wild West. A History of Wrocław’s avant-garde, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Ruchome obrazy / Moving images, BWA Wrocław, Wrocław; Polska – Izrael – Niemcy: Doświadczenie Auschwitz / Poland – Israel – Germany. The experience of Auschwitz, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków; Stan życia. Polska sztuka współczesna w kontekście globalnym / State of Life. Polish Contemporary Art within a Global Circumstance, National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Kolekcja dra Wernera Jerke. Wybór, Atlas Sztuki, Łódź; Prawda, Dobro, Piękno / Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Gender w sztuce / Gender in Art, MOCAK, Kraków; Ars Moriendi/Sztuka umierania / Ars Moriendi/The Art of Dying, BWA Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej, Tarnów; Vertical Reach, Art Space, New Haven; Umenie na hlave. Poľské súčasné umenie / Procedures for the Polish Art Today, Kunsthalle Bratislava
2014 – Postęp i higiena / Progress and hygiene, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Corpus, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Mystectwo ce swoboda (Art is freedom), Lwiwskyj Palac Mystecw in Lviv; Wohin werschwinden die Grenzen/Kam mizí hranice?, Fratres, Slavonice; Oksymoron normalności, Galeria Arsenał, Białystok; Pokażcie nam wasze marzenia / Show us your dreams, Open’er Festival 2014, Gdynia; (Mis)Understanding Photography Werke und Manifeste, Museum Folkwang, Essen; Miłość własna. Czyli artyści kochają siebie / Love of self. Artists love themselves, Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot; Grażyna Kulczyk Collection. Everybody is Nobody for Somebody, Fundacion Banco Santander, Madrid; Atlas nowoczesności. Kolekcja sztuki XX i XXI wieku / An atlas of modernity. Collection of 20th and 21st century art, MS2, Łódź; BLACK MILK – Holocaust in Contemporary Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde; Niezgodnie z instrukcją / Against the manual, Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej, Opole
2013 – Psychopapier” Galeria Piktogram/BLA, Warsaw; Na zachęte do muzeum, MS1, Łódź; Nowe otwarcie / New opening, National Museum in Gdańsk; Preferuję bardziej zrzutę niż kulturę, BWA Sokół, Nowy Sącz; MINISTER NIE APROBUJE TAKICH WYPOWIEDZI albo METAPOLITYKA / THE MINISTER DOES NOT APPROVE OF SUCH UTTERANCES or METAPOLITICS, Galeria Zderzak, Kraków; BRITISH BRITISH POLISH POLISH: Sztuka krańców Europy, długie lata 90. i dziś, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Wolny strzelec / Freelancer, Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Jak się staje, kim się jest / How you become what you are, BWA, Tarnów; Warszawa. Nazajutrz... / Warsaw. Tomorrow…, Vartai gallery, Vilnus; W sercu kraju. Kolekcja Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie / In the heart of the country. The collection of the Musem of Modern Art in Warsaw, Musem of Modern Art, Warsaw; TO NIC WAŻNEGO, TO TYLKO SZTUKA… / IT ISN’T IMPORTANT IT’S ONLY ART…, Emil Filla Gallery, Ústí nad Labem; Performer, Art Stations gallery, Poznań; The Naked Man, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest
2012 – Moc Sztuki / The Power of Art, BWA Art Gallery, Olsztyn; Urwany Film / Broken Movie, BWA Awangarda, Wrocław; One Sixth Of The Earth. Ecologies Of Image, MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León; Uwikłane w płeć. Fotografie z kolekcji Joanny i Krzysztofa Madelskich / Subjects of Gender and Desire. Photographs from the Collection of Joanna and Krzysztof Madelski, Muzeum Miasta Łodzi, Łódź; DOUBLE GAME, during the 1st Contemporary Art Biennale w Kiev, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kiev; Pełnia sztuczna, Muzeum Współczesne Wrocław, Wrocław; Sport w sztuce/Sport in Art, Muzeum Sztuki Współczesnej, Kraków
2011 – Studio Formy Otwartej Zbigniewa Libery / Zbigniew Libera Open Form Studio, tranzitdisplay, Praga; Historia w sztuce / History in art, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków; The Power of Fantasy, Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR), Brussels
2010 – Powtórka z teorii widzenia / Revision in the theory of sight, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; TO NIC WAŻNEGO, TO TYLKO SZTUKA… / IT ISN’T IMPORTANT IT’S ONLY ART, Anaid gallery, Bucharest; Polityka – polskie wybory 1944-2010 / Politics – Polish elections 1944-2010, Muzeum Sztuki Współczesnej – Oddział Muzeum Narodowego in Szczecin; Ostatni film / The last film, Raster gallery, Warsaw; Early Years, Kunstwerke, Berlin; Apogeum – nowa ekspresja 1987 / Apogee – new expression 1987, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Znaki Czasu, Toruń; I Could Live in Africa – Witte de With, Rotterdam; Mógłbym żyć w Afryce / I Could Live in Africa, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; Sąsiedzi / Neighbours, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia, Gdańsk; Sukienka / The Dress, Centrum Kultury Zamek, Poznań; Minimal Differeces, White Box, New York
2009 – Crossing Frontiers – Galeria Miejska, Prague, the Czech Republic; Schizma. Sztuka polska lat 90. / Schism. Polish 90s art – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Na okrągło. 1989-2009 / Round. 1989-2009 – Hala Stulecia, Wrocław; Międzynarodowa kolekcja sztuki współczesnej. Edycja 5 / International collection of contemporary art – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Gender Check – MUMOK, Vienna; The Social Critique 1993-2005 – Kalmar Konstmuseum, Kalmar; Szczyt bohaterów / The summit of heroes – Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków; Fragmenty / Fragments, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Znaki Czasu, Toruń; Poszliśmy do Croatan / We Went to Croatan, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Znaki Czasu, Toruń; – Interwencje! / Interventions!, National Museum in Warsaw; Sukienka / The dress, Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Elektrownia, Radom
2008 – Opowiedziane inaczej / Told differently – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia, Gdańsk; Historia się powtarza / History repeats itself – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski in Warsaw; Zabawy dużych chłopców / Big boys games – Appendix2, Warsaw; Efekt czerwonych oczu / Red eye effect – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Medium... Post... Mortem – Bałtycka Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej, Słupsk
2007 – History Repeats Itself — Kunstverein, Dortmund; Kunstwerke, Berlin; Attitude 2007. House of Human Beings — Contemporary Art Museumj in Kumamoto; Lego – Space, Bratislava; Artyści polecają się nawzajem / Artists recommend each other – Appendix2, in Warsaw; Depresja / Depression – Galeria Arsenał, Białystok; Asteizm – Galeria Program, Warsaw; Mamidło – Galeria Program, Warsaw; Manipulacje. O ekonomii kłamstwa / Manipulations. The economy of lying – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
2006 – Faites vos jeux! Kunst und Spiel seit Dada – Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen, Germany
2005 – Broniewski – Galeria Raster, Warsaw; BWA, Zielona Góra (2006); Poles Apart – Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; W stronę innego. Obserwacje i interwencje – BWA, Katowice; Ośrodek Propagandy Sztuki, Łódź (2006); Second Present – Trafo Gallery, Budapest; Post_Modellismus – Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, Austria; International Biennial of Contemporary Art – Prague, Czech Republic; Jak rozmawiać o sztuce współczesnej? – Galeria Arsenał, Białystok; Potencjał – Metropolitan Building, Warsaw; Revenge on Realism – Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna; Falsche Erwartungen – Kunsthalle, Darmstadt, Germany
2004 – From My Window – Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France; Memoires du temps de l’immaturité – Passage de Retz, Paris, France; Paisatges mediatics – Fundacio la Caixa, Lleida, Tarragona, Spain; Under the White-and-Red Flag. New Art From Poland – Estonian Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania; National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia
2002 – Mirroring Evil – The Jewish Museum, New York, USA
2001 – Irreligia – Museum Atelier 340, Brussels, Belgium; Anteprima Bovisa Milano Europa 2000 – Milan; Negocjatorzy Y – Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow
2000 – Scena 2000 – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; In Freiheit/Endlich – Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany; Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw (2001); Postindustrial Sorrow – Kunsthalle, Wiesbaden, Germany; After the Wall – Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany; L’autre moitié de l’Europe – Jeu De Paume, Paris, France
1999 – After the Wall – Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Generations. Polish Art From the End/Beginning of the Century – Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg, Russia; Rondo – Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Pink for Boys, Blue for Girls – NGBK, Berlin, Germany; Negocjatorzy sztuki – Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Łaźnia, Gdańsk; Refleksja konceptualna w sztuce polskiej. Bieżące praktyki, ruchome horyzonty – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Absence / Presence – Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
1998 – W tym szczególnym momencie – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Medialization – Edsvik Konst, Stockholm, Sweden; Gallerie Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark
1996 – The Thing Between – Technisch Sammlungen der Stadt, Dresden, Germany
1995 – Antyciała – Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Beyond Belief – Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; New I’s For New Years – Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Universalis – 23d Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Universalis – 23d Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil
1994 – Videoprzestrzenie – Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot; Medienbiennale – Minima Media, Kunsthalle Elsterpark und Fabrikhallen der Ehemaligen VEB Buntgarnwerke, Leipzig, Germany; Europa, Europa – Kunst und Austellunghalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany
1993 – Unvollkommen – Museum Bochum, Bochum, Germany; Emergency – Aperto 93, 45th Venice Biennial
1992 – Perseweracja mistyczna i róża – Państwowa Galeria Sztuki, Sopot; Current Situation 3:3 – Otso Gallery, Espoo, Sweden
1991 – Doppelte Identität – Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden, Germany; Kunst Europa – Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany; Doppelte Identität – Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden, Germany
1990 – Bakunin in Dresden – Kunstpalast, Dusseldorf, Germany; Kampfnagelfabrik, Hamburg, Germany; Querspur Videofestival – Linz, Austria; Ave Festival – Arnheim, Germany
1988 – Teraz jest teraz – Galeria Wyspa, Gdańsk
1987 – Co słychać? – Zakłady Norblina, Warsaw

Author: Karol Sienkiewicz, December 2007. Translation NS June 2016. Updated: HSz, September 2019